I’m no expert on enemas or on heroin usage (thankfully), but I would almost have to think that the first ride on skinny(er) tires after a long winter of riding slow, fat, knobby, studded tires would compare to that of a Mark Renton approved heroin enema. Maybe I should just say that getting out today on skinny 35c tires (hey, that’s like a 23c to me!) felt pretty amazing compared to the past four months of riding tires so fat they make me look skinny? Either way, it felt good to get out.
Since Tuesday’s 30+ mile per hour wind gusts and -25˚ wind chills moved on, we here in central Michigan have been treated to a few days of brilliant sunshine and blue skies. Of course the lack of cloud cover also means that temperatures are struggling to get out of the single digits until well after lunch. Unfortunately, my time slot to ride is around 10 a.m., when the thermometer is grunting, groaning and moaning to get above zero.
Because of those high winds earlier in the week and the frigid temps that followed, I spent the first three days of this week hunkered down in the Stankment™ putting in miles running on the treadmill and riding the trainer. You would think that after forty-three years of living in the cold winter climates of Pennsylvania and Michigan I would be used to the cold and snow and would have learned to love it. Nope.
Like many of my cycling friends in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota I try my best to be active through it, but unlike many of them, I always fail to embrace or love the winter. For me the result is always the same; I tolerate winter and merely try to survive it with my mind and liver still functioning properly and my pant size unchanged come spring.
But enough of that winter hating hyperbole, lets’ get to the winter riding hyperbole…
I took delivery of some new rubber today in the form of the WTB Nano TCS 2.1. I picked up the 700 x 40 version of the tires for the Jake The Snake late last fall and really liked the way they rolled on Michiganderburgh’s shit pavement, dirt and gravel roads. Sadly, I am less and less enamored with using a that cross bike for dirt road and gravel riding/racing and have been turning to my 2010 Salsa El Mariachi 99% of the time. So I decided to pick up some tubeless ready Nanos for the coming season of shit road riding. The wider girth and tubeless compatibility should be just what I am looking for. Hopefully they will be just as at ease on [dry] Michigan singletrack for days when I want to roll the hardtail.
The other day during one of my winter dirt road ride rambles I rode by one of the many crop irrigators that have been left to freeze their spouts off in the blustery, wide open Michiganderburgh fields over the winter. I stopped for a moment –perhaps to piss or to stretch out my aging, crap lower back –snapped a pic and then got to thinking how seeing these giant, mechanical, water giving beasts out in the winter makes me sort of sad. It provokes the same feeling I get when I look out my door and see my grill, which I have once again neglected to cover with tarp, covered with several inches of snow and ice. It provokes a feeling of anxious waiting. Waiting for the harsh mid-Michiganderburgh winter to end. Waiting for the return of the momentum halting spring winds, shadeless sun and dry summer air filled with the scent of manure. Sadly there are quite a few more weeks of snow, ice and frigid temps ahead of us before that happens.
I write this post at half time of the Stuper fucking Bowl, an ode to everything I hate about American sports. BUT, that Stuper Bowl was an excuse for us to trek a few blocks over to our friend’s house, eat some food, drink a few beers and be goofs for an hour or so before we called it a night.
While we watched overpaid, grossly overweight NFL jagoffs run into each other, the snow and winds thrust down upon the mid-mitten with furious anger (that is hyperbole for it was snowing and blowing). That made me smile, not because I LIKE wind and snow, but because I had forced myself out yesterday to enjoy a couple of hours of pre-snowmageddon goodness.
Thursday’s ride was a fail due to poor trail conditions, Friday was a treadmill run day due to a B-Man snow day (WOOT!) and Saturday’s ride was a fail due to sub-Arctic winds, blowing snow and my fat, stupid ass forgetting my balaclava. BUT! [insert royal trumpet blasts here]… I ACTUALLY had a successful ride today. Third time’s a charm bitches (that’s gangster-speak, no offense).
Yesterday we had blue skies, bright sunshine and 35 degree temps here in Michiganderburgh, perfect for getting out to roll some dirt roads. Sadly I was on my last day of Christmas vacation dad duty and found myself spinning for an hour in the basement. Later I would watch Facebookers post photos from their rides, hating them all with the venom of a thousand cobras. Freaking status posting bike jerks!
After 3.5 days of being ill, it was so awesome to wake up on Friday morning and not feel like I’d been drug through the street by a group of angry Stevie Wonder fans. It was even nicer to get me and my Goblin-ish chins and belly on the treadmill for a three-mile lumber, and nicer still to get out for a quick but satisfying 1:45 ramble on Michiganderburgh dirt roads via the Farley on Saturday. But…
Monday night we got an inch or so of super wet, super sloppy snow. Here in town it is pretty much all gone. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about it since Tuesday morning when I was outside cleaning it off the driveway in my PJs; until I hit the dirt roads today.
Word on the dirt street was that today was Global Fat Bike Day. Even as a fat bike owner and rider I don’t know what that means, and since I’ve never been one to do what the masses do, I rode my El Mariachi for two hours on dirt roads north of town.
Twas swell… ish.
